


Light

by Bayerick



Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Kissing, No sexual content but brief allusions to it, waxing poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 22:58:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12518520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bayerick/pseuds/Bayerick
Summary: A tender moment between Severyn Ulasi, Silencer, and Lucien Lachance—Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood. Drabble. In Universe of “New Skin,” but not chronological.





	Light

The words first spill out by accident, when they lie together in Fort Farragut. It isn’t the first time they’ve been this way, tangled in dark linen sheets and breathless in the dim torch light. It won’t be the last time, either, Severyn hopes— rather selfishly. It is against all unsaid laws that guide the life of an assassin: one ought not fall for one’s colleagues in such a line of business. But maybe those laws were not made for the Brotherhood in mind. 

This too is selfish to think, but Severyn takes what little pleasure in life she is given, when it is given. Whether this means witnessing a frosty sunrise over the Jerall Mountains or lying in the arms of a....well, lover wasn’t quite the right word. It seemed so silly, so pretentious to even think, but what the two of them had; what she hoped they had at least—it far surpassed any love she had read of, seen in practice in the streets of Cyrodiil. It was the love of a bond forged in blood, the joining of one’s soul to a promise never fully fulfilled, the unconditional love of a family member but without the ties of lineage to create obligations. 

Yet she is obligated by her own will to serve as Silencer, to commit and to act as it pleased the will of Sithis, as it pleased the will of the man beside her. The man whose breath she could feel rise and fall like the tides of the distant sea. The man who had found beauty in her work, who had proffered his hand and his blade, and his heart, though the latter was unsaid. 

Severyn runs a hand through his dark hair, over the sharp lines of his tanned jaw marked by a thin line of stubble. 

“My light,” she murmurs, unthinking, and her speaker stirs. 

“What?” He asks, lazily, turning on his side to look at her. 

“Your name,” Severyn starts, bites her lip, and starts again. 

“In the language of this country, they named you “light.” I called you this.” 

Lucien raises an eyebrow in a gesture she has come to expect: he could be amused or could sling a blade through someone’s heart with that look. Both had happened in the past. But instead a chuckle, warmer than she had heard before, came from his lips. 

“Ironic, how I have come to serve the Void with such a name.”

“But do you not think?” Severyn asks, and the look in her eyes says to Lucien “a tangent is forthcoming.” For someone without most of a tongue, she could wax poetically about so many things, he mused. 

“Is not the sunlight on fresh snow a Void in itself?”

“What do you mean?” Lucien is intrigued, now, and not the false intrigue he puts on when being told of a dull contract. Severyn does not leave his arms, loathe to leave the contact she prized, but props herself up instead on an elbow. 

“When you walk in the snow and the sun glints off it, blinding you. All is white. You can see naught else but that. Is that not a Void of its own? But a lighter one. A void of light.”

“It consumes all, but not in darkness,” Lucien responds. 

“Quite right,” the woman before him says, eagerly. “When you look straight at the sun, you shall go blind. Your vision becomes a Void. It consumes in light what it would in darkness.”

“Yes, I see what you mean, I think.” The man moves to stroke the stubble over his jaw and chin in thought. Such abstract thought he would not have expected from this woman a year earlier. 

“So it fits, then, that you would be an agent of Sithis, of the Void—even if your name is light.” Severyn finishes. 

“Too bright light that burns, that destroys and consumes, leaving darkness in its wake. Such is the void. And such are you, Lucien. “ She runs a hand languidly from his temple to his neck, tracing the veins she had so often pierced in others. His eyes—for just one moment—close. 

“You are that all consuming light, my Speaker, my Lucien.” She whispers into the crook of his shoulder, laying a kiss on his collarbone. 

“And you flatter me, my Silencer,” he says, amused, his hand carding through her silver hair. “You have not changed since we met in Skingrad, you with your reverence and pretty words.”

“And well I should,” Severyn mutters, petulantly, between kisses. Beneath her lips she can feel the repression of a chuckle in Lucien’s throat. 

“You would put the philosophers of ages past to shame with such tangents.” he hums, and leans back on the bedpost, staring at the high ceilings of the fort. 

“There is no room for philosophers in this age, I think. Assassins, though, make better pay.” Severyn leaves a small, playful bite at his collarbone to accentuate her words—she feels breath catch there, and she grins.

“There will always be men who wish to kill one another, but perhaps not men who wish to listen to any thoughts but their own.”

“That’s true, I suppose.” Lucien sighs. “And speaking of this, my Silencer, there are contracts to be fulfilled. No matter how much you will compare me to the supposed beauty of the void, bright or not, I am not Sithis nor the Night Mother.”

He moves to get up from the bed, but Severyn leverages herself over him with surprising strength, straddling him squarely. 

“As I said, there will always be men who wish others to die.” The elf ran her blunt fingernails down the man’s chest, silently delighting in the hiss of breath it garners. 

“But there will not always be a light that shines as brightly, as blindingly as yours.” She lowers her head to her Speaker’s, letting her long silver hair fall like a curtain around them. For a brief time, all Lucien can see is her face; sharp cheekbones, pale scars and blazing crimson eyes. He wonders if she is not the Void incarnate instead, the way she draws him in, clearing his head of all thoughts. 

“My Lucien, my light,” Severyn whispers in his ear, breath gentle and voice deceptively smooth. 

“Consume me, while you still burn.” She suggests, and he cannot help but follow.


End file.
